Wednesday, May 21, 2025

Part I

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Is the U.S. Fighting the Wrong War? The Complicated Nature of the U.S. Response to the Houthis

Sometimes you look at the headlines that come at us in the news and you say, “That’s new,” but in so many cases it’s a continuation of something that’s not new at all. It’s very old. So consider the headlines in recent days having to do with American and allied efforts to confront the challenge of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. This is an Islamic terrorist group that has largely taken control of much of Yemen and otherwise terrified the rest of the population.

It is also creating a great deal of havoc, particularly in interrupting shipping and in particular tying up the Suez Canal, which is one of the most vital waterways in terms of world commerce, but it represents a direct threat to Israel and it is a devoted enemy of Israel, and it follows the lead of its patron, Iran, in considering the United States to be the great Satan, to be opposed. Now, Nicholas Kristof, a liberal columnist for the New York Times, has written a very interesting piece. The piece was published this past Sunday in the New York Times edition, the headline, “$7 Billion on Useless Bombing.”

Nicholas Kristof has a deep, deep interest in humanitarianism. He has pled the case for so many beleaguered peoples all over the world. He’s himself a pretty formidable intellectual, and so when he writes something like this, he presents an argument that we’re going to find very interesting. He begins, and I quote, “The signal Scandal drew howls of outrage for the way Trump administration officials insecurely exchanged texts about military strikes on Yemen, but dig a little deeper and there’s a much larger scandal.” He says, “This is a scandal about a failed policy that empowers an enemy of the United States, weakens its security and will cost thousands of lives.

It’s one that also tarnishes President Joe Biden, but reaches its apotheosis under President Trump.” Then he says this, “It all goes back to the brutal Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and October 2023 and Israel’s savage response leveling entire neighborhoods of Gaza.” In his summary, he says, “The repressive Houthi regime of Yemen sought to win regional support by attacking supposedly pro-Israeli ships passing nearby in the Red Sea.” He goes on to acknowledge, “In fact, it struck at all ships.”

And then he goes on basically to say that the Biden administration decided to use US military force in order to punish the Houthis so that they would stop attacking shipping going through the narrow area there that leads into the Suez Canal and so that they would stop attacking vital US interests, and that includes interest in Israel. But the fact is that the American military has launched some pretty significant attacks against the Houthi rebels, and it has wrought a lot of damaging in terms of Houthi territory.

It has destroyed a lot of structures. It has also killed a good number of people on the ground. The United States is using Reaper cruise missiles, but the Houthi rebels are using far less expensive munitions, and they’re wreaking a whole lot of damage. Now, the point that Nicholas Kristof is making is that this money has been misspent in this effort. And there’s a situation here that goes back to what was cited during the first Gulf War and certainly also into the second Gulf War, and that has to do with what defense analysts call “asymmetrical warfare.” And in asymmetrical warfare, you don’t have a state versus a state.

You have a state versus another threatening force. And this was a problem of course, going into Afghanistan, going into Iraq considering so many terrorist attacks just mentioned 9/11/2001 as an example. Asymmetric warfare is where you have a giant military power such as the United States. You have the Navy, you have the Air Force, you have the Marines, you have the Army, you have advanced technology and weapons of awesome destructive strength. On the other hand in the asymmetry, the imbalance here, the other force has the opportunity of mobility, of disguise, of camouflage, of subterfuge.

This is basically the problem of terrorism writ large. You have a large military, but how effective can even the largest military be against a determined ideological foe, even one that has basically nothing in terms of advanced technology, it’s nowhere near the technological equal. There’s no symmetry there. But the fact is that over and over again, the advantage seems to go to the weaker rather than to the stronger because of this asymmetry. 

Now, why is Nicholas Kristof particularly interested in this? He’s interested in it because of his very demonstrable humanitarianism. He is saying that at the very time the United States military is spending about 7 billion in this effort. And it’s interesting that he assigns blame to the Biden administration and now to the Trump administration. And so in that sense, he’s criticizing both Democrats and Republicans in the use of military force against the threat like the Houthi rebels. And he’s saying that something else needs to be tried. And for one thing, he makes a very interesting argument, and it’s the kind of argument and worldview analysis we need to take seriously to understand.

He makes the argument that the interest of the United States, the interest of our allies, and the interest of humanitarian good will be more advanced by not spending $7 billion attacking in asymmetrical warfare, a terrorist force that is unlikely to be severely deterred by such attacks, and instead investing in nation-building or at least in humanitarian efforts to try to feed children, build communities, et cetera. And so that’s a very interesting argument and it is one that has characterized much of the discussion in foreign policy in terms of human aid policy, humanitarian concerns for the course of the last century or so.

You have those who say, look, “We need order before we can help people.” And those who say, “We need to help people before we can have order.” The money angle is very interesting. Kristof writes, “The Houthis in six weeks shot down seven MQ-9 Reaper drones, which cost about $30 million each, and the United States lost two F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter planes at $67 million each.” He says, “Defense priorities of Washington think tank plausibly estimates that between Biden and Trump, the United States wasted more than 7 billion on bombing Yemen over a little more than two years. Most of that appears to have been spent on Biden’s watch.”

So again, he’s not making so much a partisan argument here. It is a liberal argument, it is a humanitarian argument. But it’s that argument that says we could reach our aims more by helping people, feeding children. And he points to very real dangers to children and especially to girls under the situation of the Houthis there in Yemen. Because the Houthis, by the way, following an Islamic logic, they favor boys more than girls, and so it is girls who are most endangered. And Kristof I think raises a very legitimate humanitarian point. What could we do to help those people on the ground?

Because not only do you have the military attacks costing estimated here, $7 billion, you also have the asymmetrical warfare where the Houthis, at least according to some reports, are using drones that cause as little as 200 to 500 dollars, which are probably given to them by Iran in the first place. And not only do you have that, you have the situation in which the people in that country are becoming more and more threatened. They’re being more and more oppressed by the Houthis and the Houthis are gaining an influence with the American attacks. They’re not losing influence because of the American attacks. That’s the argument. It’s a coherent argument. It’s one that needs to be taken seriously.

But at the same time, you have to look back and say, “Well, what if we followed this advice? What if we thought that what we should do is stop bombing, no longer use the Reaper drones, no longer to bomb, no longer send the F/A-18s on attack and instead we tried humanitarian intervention? Well, how would that look different on the ground? What difference would it make?” And in this respect for the good of the people and maybe even especially the children there in Yemen as well as American interest in the region.

Well, one of the things we have to just ask here is how in the world that could happen? In a situation in which you have Houthi control of the territory and in a situation in which like in so many other parts of the world, the fact is that much of that humanitarian aid never gets to its intended recipient, but instead is diverted basically by terrorist pirates. In another world, it might be possible that such an argument might have plausibility. But the other problem here is that you can’t let a terrorist force just continue to press itself and gain advantage.

And even though there is a sense in which the Houthis are probably thinking that they’re seizing some kind of victory by resisting the United States with its great military superpower strength, the reality is we also don’t know what would’ve happened if the United States under both administrations had not taken these actions. And so I want us to look at this because this is a humanitarian argument and we who honor the fact that every single human being is made in God’s image, and we who as Christians genuinely want to help people, we have to ask some fundamental and hard questions about how we could actually help people.

And this is where I come back to the fact that a conservative understanding of these things does take into consideration that there are human needs and one of those needs is order. And I believe that it’s very difficult to do anything including humanitarian relief, if there’s absolute disorder on the ground. There has to be some requisite order and you also have to avoid the piracy problem and all the rest. I am not saying that Nicholas Kristof is absolutely wrong. As a matter of fact, I think there are probably people inside the Biden administration and now inside the Trump administration, inside the military leadership, we have to wonder what exactly is the right thing to do in this situation.

But letting a terrorist group like this threaten the safety and security of the entire world when it comes to their terrorist attacks, it doesn’t appear that it’s a cogent argument to say, “Let’s just instead try humanitarian aid.” But there’s one other aspect of this article that caught my attention. Kristof writes, “What could Trump do to stop the Houthis attacks on shipping?” He continues, he answers his own question. “The obvious step would be to press Israel much harder to accept a deal providing for the return of all hostages and a lasting truce in Gaza.” 

I find that statement very problematic in moral terms because it says the Israel is the problem, and if we would just encourage Israel, force Israel, coerce Israel to reach a truce with the forces of Hamas there in Gaza, that would lead to the release of the hostages and some just result in Gaza. If we could only do that, if we could only encourage Israel to do that, then the Houthis would no longer attack the shipping, the threat would go away. I don’t think that’s plausible. I also think it inverts the morality of the situation here. And I want to say, I think Nicholas Kristof is aware at least of the problem.

I think that’s why in the opening of his consideration here, he cites the Hamas attack on Israel. So he’s covered that base, but he puts the moral responsibility on Israel to bring an end to this in terms of a just result that would bring peace to Gaza and also the return of Israeli hostages. Okay, let’s ask a fundamental question. After we’re talking about October of 2023, with the taking of those hostages and those savage massacre that has taken place in Israel since its founding. Let’s ask the question, why have the hostages not been released?

I want to respond, that is not the fault of Israel. It is not because of malfeasance or bad decisions in Israel. It is because when you’re dealing with a terrorist group which has basically an ideology of death at the center of its very essence, I think it’s ridiculous to say that the moral responsibilities here on Israel. Now by the way, there is moral responsibility on Israel when it comes to the people in Gaza, the beleaguered Palestinians. There are a lot of Palestinian children who are suffering. There’s an awful lot of hunger even to the point of starvation, an awful lot of malnutrition. And we really are looking at a moral challenge for Israel.

But Israel did not start this war, and Israel cannot unilaterally end this. And the problem is that if you look back to Israel’s invasion of Gaza, in order to deal with the problem of Hamas, and I would argue that I think most nations understand the imperative on Israel, they want to acknowledge it publicly or not. They understand that when you are confronted with a threat like Hamas, you can’t just deal with it. You have to do your very best to eliminate it. And given the fact that the Palestinian people have not separated themselves from Hamas, and remember Hamas was at one point elected by the population there in Gaza in terms of this leadership, there is simply once again no way to deal with this humanitarian crisis with any adequacy, so long as Hamas continues in control and the threat continues against Israel.

The Netanyahu government is absolutely determined that it is going to resolve this issue. And I just want to encourage Americans to consider this. If a similar threat came against the United States, we would expect any administration, any President of the United States to see this challenge through, and thus we can’t expect something less of one of our allies. We do indeed live in a broken world. Headlines like this and moral quandaries like this remind us of that brokenness, and we as Christians want to do anything we can. We want to see the United States do anything it can to provide genuine humanitarian help in light of this kind of horrible situation.

But we also understand the limitations when we are confronting a threat like the terrorist group, the Houthi rebels. This is not an easily resolvable situation, as is so often the case in foreign policy. If it were an easily resolvable problem, it would’ve been resolved.

Part II

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Austin is a New Kind of Weird? Is the Texas Capital, A Blue Dot in a Red State, Changing its Color?

Well, all right, let’s come back to the United States with the next headline. And this one also comes in the international edition of the New York Times, which makes this very interesting. The headline is “Liberal Austin Grapples with a Rightward Shift.” The Austin in this case is of course Austin, Texas and the New York Times here is offering by means of reporter David Goodman.

A very interesting angle on the fact that when you look at Austin, which after all has had something of an unofficial city motto of “Keep Austin weird,” which has seen itself as a blue dot in a very red state. It turns out that some of the changes that have come to Austin in recent years, particularly visible in the last couple of years, particularly visible in such things as the move of Tesla there to Texas and other moves, the situation in Austin is not exactly what it was before, and some people who thought they lived in a safely blue Austin are discovering that maybe the blue isn’t so safe.

Now, Texans talk like Texans, and one person who confronted with the suggestion that perhaps Austin is moving in a more red direction than in the past, well, he responded by saying, that’s nonsense. Evan Smith, who is a former leader of the Texas Tribune identified as an Austin-based nonprofit news site, he’s having nothing of it. He said, “If an asteroid fell from the sky and hit a Democratic candidate for office in Travis County and killed that person, that person’s corpse was still beat alive Republican.” Now, the Times analysis indicates that Austin is still for now pretty safely the most liberal city or metropolitan area in Texas, but it’s changing and it’s changing for a number of reasons.

As Goodman writes, “That’s how it goes in Texas’s capital” where he writes about Elon Musk. And he says, “His sharp rightward shift has been received with a mix of anger and hair-pulling agony. Austin’s conflicted feelings reflect both the billionaire entrepreneurs economic influence on the city and the city’s broader transformation from a medium-sized college town arranged around the state capital to a tech-fueled metropolis with a glass and steel skyline and a changing image.” So at least one part of this article would indicate that the motto of Austin has largely moved from “Keep Austin Weird” to “Keep Austin Rich.”

There’s also an interesting bit of historical background in this article. The city leaders in Austin had basically sought to prevent growth from happening in Austin that they’d seen happen in cities like Dallas and Houston. So when it came to the expansion of roads and other infrastructure, for years and indeed for decades, folks in Austin or at least in that county tried to prevent that from happening. But nonetheless, there’s been a migration, very interesting situation has occurred in terms of the political demographics of the United States in recent years.

You’ve had people move from the coasts to more hospitable areas, lower taxation, more conservative politics, less regulation. And so there’s been an exodus of people from the Northeast down to states like Florida and also Georgia and the Carolinas. There are now the Halfbacks, that’s a reference to people who have moved from the north and sometimes have moved as far south as Florida. They decided that’s too far, so they moved halfway back to Asheville, North Carolina. They’re referred to demographically as “Halfbacks.” There have also been a lot of people who have left California and who moved to Texas as well as others who’ve moved from California, particularly from northern California into places like Idaho and other states and regions in the Intermountain West.

Well, that’s a huge question. It’s a huge quandary politically, both parties wonder what this means. You heard there someone saying, “Well, when it comes to Austin, it’s safely democratic.” It probably is, at least for a long time. I often mention that in worldview analysis you understand the closer you get to a coast, the closer you get to a campus and the closer you get to say bureaucracy or a capital, the more liberal things become. From the state of Kentucky, I can tell you that most of Kentucky is as red as red can get, but where you have the University of Kentucky in Lexington, it’s bluer. Where you have the state capital in Frankfort, it’s bluer. Where you have Louisville with all kinds of metropolitan interests, and which is a genuine city dealing with, well, more traditionally urban politics, you again have blue.

So you have a red state, but you got blue dots. Well, the problem is from a Republican perspective, from a conservative perspective, is that you have people moving from liberal states and they bring their liberal voting patterns with them. Now, when it comes to a city like Austin, they were counting on that. The liberals are particularly counting on it because the people who are moving there from California, after all they’re Californians. But of course the other side, the Democrats are worried that the people who are moving from California to Texas are moving for reasons that aren’t very, well, pro-democratic party. They want lower Taxation and they want less regulation.

They’re trying to get away from California. That’s why they’re moving from California. Now, I’m not here criticizing California in that sense. I’m not a champion for Austin, Texas. I’m just saying in worldview analysis, this is really interesting because you have people moving from one place to another. There are deep convictional as well as socio-economic issues that are going on here, and there’s a lot of unpredictability ahead. The Democratic Party hopes that Texas by means of immigration, by means of urbanization, changing demographics will move from red to blue. The Republicans are hoping of course, that that doesn’t happen, and they’re hoping the people who are moving to Texas will learn to vote like Texans. The Democrats are of course, they’re hoping for the opposite.

Right now, honestly, neither side knows exactly what’s going to happen. But we do understand that big issues are afoot, and one of the interesting things here is that it has caught the attention of the New York Times that there are people in Austin who are looking around Austin saying, “I’m not sure we’re so predictably blue as we used to be.” And furthermore, you got someone like Elon Musk. And remember when Elon Musk announced that he was going to be moving so much of his operation to Texas and in particular to Austin, the people there thought, “This is a great victory for Silicon Valley liberalism.” Only it turns out they went from Silicon Valley liberalism to DOGE. That wasn’t exactly the plan. 

Another very interesting series of articles that’s appeared in the mainstream media, which is now called Tesla Anxiety. Tesla anxiety is what you do when you are a liberal who bought a Tesla to make a liberal statement, and now your Tesla’s not such a liberal statement you once thought it was. There are reports right now of resale markets for Tesla’s growing with all kinds of people wanting to unload the Tesla’s, but of course, what are you going to buy in return? Are you going to go from a Tesla to an expedition? What kind of moral point are you going to be able to make? Perhaps we can make the suggestion, and I’m saying this from Europe where this might be a different kind of suggestion. Maybe if you really believe what you say, you’ll sell your Tesla and decide to buy a bicycle.

Part III

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The Parable of Radioactive Toothpaste: The Importance of Humility in the Modern Age

One of the things we’d like to count upon is the fact that our toothpaste is safe, and you think that’s an odd issue to have this kind of priority on The Briefing, but I want to tell you why I am talking about toothpaste. It is because the Financial Times has covered a very interesting story from the past, including controversy over a family and a scientist named Siegfried Merzbacher in Germany who helped to invent what was called Doramad Toothpaste in the 1920s. Okay, what’s interesting? It was sold as being a superior toothpaste because of its active ingredient. What was its active ingredient? Radioactive elements. One of the women at the center of a recent podcast covered here in this story said “My grandmother grew up brushing her teeth with radioactive toothpaste.” 

That was Doramad described as “A toothpaste containing a radioactive metal that according to the advertisements yielded sparkling brilliant teeth and brought home samples,” that is this family brought home samples for the wife and children. Just think about that. You want glowing teeth? Well, here’s the way to have it. Radioactive toothpaste. Frankly, that’s a stupid idea. But one of the things I want to raise here is the issue that it must not have looked so stupid at the time. Sometimes when you look at the field of plausibility, you have claims made that people just take it face value, and when you look at this kind of ad coming from this particular kind of product, we do live in a world that is not that remote from us.

When just about one century ago, it did make sense to people that they would give their children radioactive toothpaste. It’s at least a reminder to us that we are time-bound and we know what we know and we don’t know what we don’t know. Something like that is presented here as just a matter of human foibles and some interesting anecdote from the past might explain by the way, some things that happened with the children that used radioactive toothpaste. But to me, I think it’s also a reminder of the humility that ought to be ours. There is no telling what we’re doing right now, what we’re using right now, what we’re taking right now, that may a century from now be considered if the Lord tarries, insane.

But we don’t live then, we live now, and our responsibility is to think as clearly, as honestly, and as truthfully as we possibly can now. Because that’s where we live, right now. That’s a part of the human condition as well.